Luciano Moggi facts for kids
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Luciano Moggi (Italian pronunciation: [luˈtʃaːno ˈmɔddʒi] born 10 July 1937) is a former Italian association football administrator and convicted fraudster. He was a club executive for Roma, Lazio, Torino, Napoli, and Juventus, leading them to win six leagues (five with Juventus and one with Naples), three Coppa Italia (with Roma, Torino, and Juventus), five Supercoppa Italiana (four with Juventus and one with Napoli), one UEFA Champions League, one Intercontinental Cup, one UEFA Super Cup, and one Intertoto Cup (all with Juventus), as well as winning one UEFA Cup with Napoli. He has since become a freelance journalist and commentator.
In May 2006, Moggi was involved in the sports scandal that became known as Calciopoli, which remains a much debated and controversial topic due to the one-sided focus on Juventus and Moggi, an issue that was cited in the Naples sentence about the criminal trial. The related Calciopoli trials in Naples, which revealed the implications of many other clubs who could not be put on trial due to the statute of limitations and were not weighted in the Moggi sentences, absolved him of some related offences and reached the appeal sentence in December 2013 with a sentence of 2 years and 4 months in prison. His remaining charges related to Calciopoli were cancelled without a new trial due to the statute of limitations by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation in March 2015. In March 2020, Moggi appealed to the European Court of Human Rights for the conduct of the trials.
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Biography
Moggi was born into a modest family in Monticiano, in the province of Siena on 10 July 1937. He had a passion for football from an early age, playing for forty days in Akragas in the 1963–64 Serie C season. He left school at the age of 13. After middle school, he worked at the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, settling in Civitavecchia and playing as a stopper in teams of lower categories. In the late 1960s, dissatisfied with his work and tired of playing football without income, Moggi envisioned a future as a talent scout, particularly in minor football. His son, Alessandro Moggi, works as an agent for several football players and managers. He is head of GEA World, a consortium of football agents and managers, which were ranked the first by volume from 2002 to 2006.
Career
Moggi worked as a railway station caretaker until the early 1970s, when he met Italo Allodi, then Juventus' managing director, who appointed him to minor roles at the club. Before being called as chief managing director by Juventus in 1994, he worked for and collaborated with several teams, such as Roma, Lazio, Torino, and Napoli, where he won several league, domestic, and confederal titles.
Early years at Juventus and Roma
After entering senior football in the 1970s for Juventus under general manager Allodi, Moggi organized a network of scouts looking for young talent in suburban fields. Among his footballers are the sixteen year old Paolo Rossi in 1972, Claudio Gentile in 1973, and Gaetano Scirea in 1974. A few years later, Moggi took on a more important role, and he also established contacts with the other teams to start negotiations until he was forced to change companies due to the break with then-Juventus president Giampiero Boniperti.
Moggi's next job was at Roma of the new president Gaetano Anzalone. Thanks to the help of some journalists, it was Moggi who came forward and got to know Anzalone, who decided on his job as transfer market consultant in 1977. During his period at Roma, which won the 1979–80 Coppa Italia, Moggi acquired Roberto Pruzzo, who was blown right to Boniperti's Juventus. His departure from Roma occurred a few days after Dino Viola, the new president, learned that, on the eve of the match against Ascoli, Moggi had been having dinner with Claudio Pieri, the match referee. It was 25 November 1979 and the tenth matchday of the 1979–80 Serie A that was being played; Roma won the match 1–0 and the president of Ascoli, Costantino Rozzi, was upset about a refeering that, in his view, was in favour of Roma. In the locker room, Rozzi met Viola, to whom he said his criticism of Moggi, seen in a restaurant in the company of the referee and the two linesmen. Moggi described it as a casual event. Viola used the episode as a pretest to release Moggi, telling him he wanted a sporting director who lived in Rome, even though Moggi lived in the Rome metropolitan area of Civitavecchia.
Lazio, Torino, Napoli, Roma, and Juventus
After the 1980 Italian football betting scandal, which came to be known as Totonero and in which he was not involved, Moggi was hired as general manager by Lazio to relaunch it. After two years, he resigned with the club still in Serie B. In 1982, he moved to Torino of president Sergio Rossi and managing director Luciano Nizzola. He suffered the protests of the fans due to the underwhelming market hits completed, such as the Argentine Patricio Hernández, or missed ones, such as the Yugoslav Safet Sušić. He remained at Torino for five years with mixed results. On 29 May 1987, he resigned from his position.
On 22 June 1987, Moggi moved at Napoli of Corrado Ferlaino and Diego Armando Maradona immediately after the victory of their first scudetto, succeeding Allodi. Napoli won the 1989 UEFA Cup final, the 1989–90 Serie A, and the 1990 Supercoppa Italiana. In March 1991, Moggi resigned due to incompatibility with Ferlaino. He then returned at Torino under president Gian Mauro Borsano, and the club reached the 1992 UEFA Cup final, which was lost due to the away goals rule, and won the 1993 Coppa Italia final due to the same rule. In 1994, he was investigated together with his collaborator Luigi Pavarese for sporting offenses. The sentence was one of acquittal because Pavarese assumed all the responsibilities.
Once he left Torino, Moggi returned at Franco Sensi's Roma. In 1994, he moved at Juventus under the managing director Antonio Giraudo and where he would be described by Gianni Agnelli as "the king's groom, who must know all horse thieves". The twelve years with Juventus were the most successful of his entire management career and placed him among the most important football managers at national and international level. Juventus won five leagues (plus one revoked and one left unassigned), one UEFA Champions League, one Intercontinental Cup, one UEFA Super Cup, one Intertoto Cup, one Coppa Italia, and four Supercoppa Italiana. He also reached three Champions League finals, one UEFA Cup final, and two other finals of Coppa Italia.
Moggi remained at Juventus until May 2006 when he resigned. He was linked to a judicial investigation in the sports field known as Calciopoli. Some telephone tapping of an investigation filed by the court of Turin were published in some newspapers, the folders of which had been sent to Franco Carraro, then president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and himself involved in the scandal but came out unscattered not without controversy, in which some managers inquired with the referee designator Pierluigi Pairetto, then-referee delegate for UEFA, on the names of some referees who had to be drawn to referee the matches of the next Champions League. A scandal then broke out, which led to the resignation of Moggi and the other two managers, for an investigation that theorized the crime of criminal association aimed at sports fraud. According to the allegations, Moggi had singular relationships with some people who gravitated around Italian sports journalism, with the aim of putting the work of referees and clubs in a good or bad light. Turin's public prosecution office had earlier rejected the charges by the prosecution.
Calciopoli
In May 2006, Moggi was linked as the central figure in Calciopoli, a vast referee lobbying scandal spanning the professional top two Italian football leagues. Daily newspaper la Repubblica published the contents of several wiretappings in which Moggi, along with the country's former referee nominator Pierluigi Pairetto, was said to assign referees to specific matches, including many in which Juventus was not a participant. Moggi received a five-year ban from football and a recommendation to the FIGC president that he be banned for life from membership of the FIGC at any level.
On 8 November 2011, Naples court issued the first conclusion of the criminal case against Moggi and the other football personalities involved, sentencing him to jail for five years and four months for criminal association. In December 2013, Moggi's sentence was reduced to two years and four months for being found guilty of conspiring to commit a crime; the earlier charge of sporting fraud was dismissed, owing to the statute of limitations. On 23 March 2015, in its final resolution, Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation ruled that Moggi was acquitted of "some individual charges for sporting fraud, but not from being the 'promoter' of the 'criminal conspiracy' that culminated in Calciopoli." Nevertheless, the remaining charges of Moggi were cancelled without a new trial due to the statute of limitations.
When Moggi's conviction in criminal court in connection with the scandal was partially written off by the Supreme Court, Juventus sued the FIGC for €443 million for damages caused by their 2006 relegation. Then-FIGC president Carlo Tavecchio offered to discuss reinstatement of the lost scudetti in exchange for Juventus dropping the lawsuit. On 9 September 2015, the Supreme Court released a 150-page document that explained its final ruling of the case, based on the controversial 2006 sporting sentence, which did not take in consideration the other clubs involved because they could not be put on trial due to the statute of limitations, and it would be necessary to request and open a revocation of judgment pursuant to Article 39 of the Code of Sports Justice. Despite his remaining charges being cancelled without a new trial due to the statute of limitations, the court confirmed that Moggi was actively involved in the sporting fraud, which was intended to favour Juventus and increase his own personal benefits according to La Gazzetta dello Sport. As did the Naples court in 2012, the court commented that the developments and behavior of other clubs and executives were not investigated in depth. In 2016, the TAR tribunal rejected the request of compensation promoted by Juventus. On 15 March 2017, Moggi's lifetime ban was definitively confirmed on final appeal.
Moggi continues to make observations on the Serie A on Italy's newspapers, as well as sports and local television channels, such as Sportitalia and Telecapri Sport. Since 2011, he collaborates with Radio Manà Manà. In March 2020, having exhausted appeals in Italy's courts, Moggi appealed to the European Court of Human Rights for the conduct of the trials, including the lack of time given to the defence in the 2006 sporting trial, among other issues; Giraudo's was accepted in September 2021.
Books
See also
In Spanish: Luciano Moggi para niños
